Gender in the Construction of the Democratic Developmental State

12-14 November 2006, Cairo, Egypt

Number of visits: 1792

In the period since the beginning of the 1990s, CODESRIA has been at theforefront of the quest to harness the efforts of African scholars in both extendingthe frontiers of knowledge production around issues of gender, and doingso in a manner that ensures that for as many scholars as are active in its networksand at other African sites of scholarly work, gender is integrated intotheir frames of analyses. This has been done in line with the Council’s institutionalcommitment, integral to its Charter mandate, to produce knowledge thatis not only anchored in the realities of the African continent but which also contributesto the progressive transformation of livelihoods and is premised on contributionsdrawn from multidisciplinary perspectives. The results which havebeen accumulated from the experience of the Council and other like-mindedinstitutions have, at one level, culminated in an efflorescence of studies on variousaspects of the gender dynamics of development, an expansion in the communityof African scholars with an active interest in gender research, the networkingof that community on a sub-regional and pan-African scale, and theprojection of the voices of its members on a global scale.

At another level, however, few will doubt that for all the progress which hasbeen made in promoting the idea of the centrality of gender to the robustnessof any social research and the completeness of any project of social transformation,a considerable amount of work still remains to be done. The challengesthat are posed are many but in summary could be said to centre around theneed to consolidate the many critiques of development that have been madefrom various gender – and feminist perspectives into a comprehensive, internallycoherent and consistent set of alternatives on the basis of which furtheradvances in theory, method and praxis could be achieved. Engendering Africandevelopment requires close attention not only to the analytical tools of theresearcher but also a gendered critique of development that questions the veryfoundations on which the African developmental process rests and the terms onwhich it has proceeded as a pre-requisite for new theoretical approaches andpolicy instruments. In sum, what is called for today is a complete paradigm shiftfor which new scholarship will be necessary.

To be sure, the Women in Development (WID), Women and Development(WAD)/Gender and Development (GAD) strategies that shaped policy interventionsand informed scholarly reflections in the 1960s and 1970s went someway in addressing some of the gender-based silences and contradictions in thedevelopment process. However, they were limited by the fact that they mostlyremained within the established parameters of the conventional theories of developmentand the discourses of the exponents of the mainstream approaches.Also, they tended to limit the terrain of analysis to either narrowly economisticconsiderations or perspectives that were beholden to a notion of developmentas economic growth. Furthermore, women continued to be treated more as objectsof history rather than makers of history in their own right; they “received”development but were not the makers of development. Gallant efforts thatwere made to draw attention to trends in the informal economy, the culturaland artistic expressions of women’s developmental work, the status of the domesticeconomy of care, the transformation of gender identities in the production and commercial processes, and innovations in science and technology didnot succeed in altering the terms of the debate and generating a fully liberatingalternative discourse in part because of the increased donorisation of genderas a tool of policy.

The decline of the state-interventionist strategy of development that occurred inthe wake of the neo-liberal revolution of the 1980s represented a setback forthe WID – WAD/GAD approaches precisely because their intellectual rootswere undermined by the radical shift in direction that occurred as the ideologyof the market and IMF/World Bank structural adjustment programmes gainedground. Subsequent efforts made to transcend the WID-WAD/GAD frameworkinitially centred on strategies for expanding access to micro-credit and safetynet schemes in order to mitigate the costs of neo-liberal economic adjustmentand enhance women’s participation in market processes. Later on, investmentswere made in exercises designed to modify dominant macro-economic modelsand policies in order to better accommodate gender concerns. In this connection,gender-budgeting enjoyed perhaps the highest profile. The political corollaryof this was the rise of state feminism symbolised by the office of first ladies andthe campaign for greater gender balance in the institutions of state power. Butthese approaches too, for all their success in keeping the Gender Question onthe radar, did not, in most cases, transcend the parameters set by the new discoursesof the market and the political economy of neo-liberalism; their politicalflipside may have served to reinforce existing structures of unaccountablepower.

Looking at the Africa of the 1980s and 1990s, there is a lot to be regretted bythe failure of dominant discussions on development to tackle the roots of the inabilityof scholars and practitioners to break out of the (self-imposed) prisonrepresented by the theoretical and institutional boxes from which they work.For, as the state went into decline, market failures proliferated, violent conflictsburst out or acquired a new lease of life, new local and international diasporaswere born, the boundaries of the informal economy expanded, the HIV/AIDSpandemic took its toll, and the economy of care grew further in significance, therole of women in the well-being of the household and society became evermore significant. Without doubt, the continued reproduction of economy andsociety in Africa depended on the tenacity and ingenuity of women. In thischanged context, the nature of the gender relationship became ever more centralto the prospects for development whether viewed from the vantage pointof the production process (including labour markets), the state-citizen relationship,the negotiation of the market and market relations, efforts at reinventingthe state, and innovations in the arts, culture and technology. These developmentsadded up to create a radically different context for gender relationsthat must, of necessity, be taken into account in a holistic re-thinking of developmentin Africa.

The agenda of social transformation in the development process has remaineda live one which is in need of being creatively re-visited at a time when questionsare cumulating on the limits of the market and the costs of the maladjustmentof African economies and societies. The questions which are being raisedhave been accompanied by a revival of academic and policy interest in developmentand the role which the state could play in it. In this connection, the notionof the developmental state has been revived and is rapidly regaining currency.Among the most enlightened exponents of the renewed developmental statethesis as a path for Africa both to overcome its prolonged socio-economic crisesand transcend the maladjustments brought about by the IMF/World Bank marketfundamentalism of the 1980s and 1990s, a fundamentalism that may beless confident than before but which has not yet been decisively defeated, theirprimary concern has been to avoid the errors that hobbled the efforts that weremade in Africa in the 1960s and 1970s to foster development and promote adevelopmental state project. These errors are primarily seen as being locatedin the arena of politics as captured by the deficit of democracy. It is on accountof these deficits that the renewed discussion on the importance of the revival ofa developmental state project has placed an accent on the need to ensure thatthis time, Africa strives to build democratic developmental states. Different authorshave identified different entry points for the democratic import of the developmentalstate project they have in mind but these differences need not detainus for now. What is really important is that it is inconceivable that the democraticdevelopmental state, however defined, can be built without a clearintegration of gender in the equation. And it is precisely here that the silenceshave been loudest and, where gendered voices have been noted, it has beenmore for their feebleness than for their bold staking of a claim. The need tocorrect this early enough is clear: It will ensure that the struggle to more effectivelyengender development in Africa will avoid the historical errors of thepast, namely, seeking merely to add gender garnishing to a meal that has alreadybeen cooked ready to serve. It is this challenge that constitutes the coreobjective of the 2006 CODESRIA Gender Symposium which, like the 2005 edition carries forward the broad theme of development alternatives that also constitutedthe primary focus of the 11th General Assembly of the Council held inMaputo, Mozambique, in December 2005.

Participants in the CODESRIA 2006 Gender symposium will be invited to engagethe renewed debate on the developmental state in Africa whether builton its democratic underpinnings or its social/institutional embedness with a viewto squarely engendering its theoretical underpinnings and weaving gender concernsinto the fabric of its proposed operational policies. This will require a critical,gendered reading of the emerging body of new developmental state literaturein all of its variants; it will also involve an engagement with the epistemologicalfoundations of the theory and practice of development, the theory ofthe state, the theory of democracy, and the question of public institutions. To thisend, CODESRIA is commissioning think pieces that will speak to all aspects of thedevelopmental state debate in order to permit the participants in the symposiumto consider and, to the extent possible, jointly develop new conceptual perspectivesand theoretical possibilities on the basis of a re-reading of history, are-thinking of inherited knowledge and the generation of fresh evidence. Such abold re-reading is necessary because of the changes that have occurred in Africaneconomies and societies in the period since the initial efforts after independenceto foster developmentalism. Whether it be at the level of the householdor in the formal and informal sectors of the economy, women have gainedan increasing role – perhaps even share – of the economy on a scale that ismuch higher today than at independence even though this is not reflected in thecomputation of the national wealth or in the distribution of power. It is incumbenton the scholarly community to correct this anomaly and, in so doing, ensurethat the gender factor is placed at the centre of the quest for new developmentaldemocracies in Africa. Among the sub-themes around which reflections willbe organised are:

i. Coming to Grips with Gender in Africa’s Experiences of Development:

a. The Theoretical and Conceptual Challenges; b. The Methodological Challenges.

ii. Engendering the Theories of Democratic Developmental States:

a.Gender Silences in the Theory and Practice of Development; b. Gender Silences in the Theory and Praxis of the State; c. Gender Silences in the Theory and Practice of Democracy.

iii. Gender in the Macro-Economic Foundations of the Democratic DevelopmentalState

iv. Gender in the Macro-Social Foundations of the Democratic DevelopmentalState

v. Gender in the Political Institutional Fabric of the Democratic DevelopmentalState

vi. Gender in the Construction of the Political Institutions of the Democratic DevelopmentalState

vii. Gender in the Labour Regimes of the Developmental State Project

viii.Gender in the Financing of a Developmental Democracy

ix. Towards New Forms of Women’s Participation in the Democratic DevelopmentalProject.

Comments

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